A Ghost In The Throat (new cover) by Doireann Ni Ghriófa

A Ghost In The Throat by Doireann Ni Ghriófa.

Published with a new paperback cover 28th October 2021 by Tramp Press. Originally published 27th August 2020.

From the cover of the book:

'When we first met, I was a child, and she had been dead for centuries.

I am eleven, a dark-haired child given to staring out window...  Her voice makes it 1773, a fine day in May, and puts English soldiers crouching in ambush; I add ditch-water to drench their knees. Their muskets point towards a young man who is falling from his saddle in slow, slow motion. A woman hurries in and kneels over him, her voice rising in an antique formula of breath and syllable the teacher calls a caoineadh, a keen to lament the dead.'

A true original, this stunning prose debut by Doireann Ní Ghríofa weaves two stories together. In the 1700s, an Irish noblewoman, on discovering her husband has been murdered, drinks handfuls of his blood and composes an extraordinary poem that reaches across the centuries to another poet. In the present day, a young mother narrowly avoids tragedy in her own life. On encountering the poem, she becomes obsessed with finding out the rest of the story.

Doireann Ní Ghríofa has sculpted a fluid hybrid of essay and autofiction to explore the ways in which a life can be changed in response to the discovery of another's -- in this case, Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill's Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire, famously referred to by Peter Levi as 'the greatest poem written in either Ireland or Britain during the eighteenth century.'

A devastating and timeless tale about finding your voice by freeing another's.

WINNER Book of the Year, the Irish Book Awards

WINNER Foyles Non-Fiction Book of the Year

SHORTLISTED Rathbones Folio Prize

SHORTLISTED Desmond Elliot Prize

LONGLISTED Republic of Consciousness Prize

WINNER James Tait Black Prize for Biography

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A Ghost in the Throat was my favourite book of 2020 by far, and it is one which has stayed with me ever since, tucked away in my heart. Since it was first published, it has gone on to be nominated for, and win, many literary prizes and Tramp Press are now reissuing the book with a cover that reflects the well deserved praise that has been heaped up it. I am also overjoyed that this book is now available in an audio format too, because it is magical! 

To mark the publication of the new paperback cover, I am sharing my review with you again, and make no apology for doing so. This a rare and beautiful book... 

*****

What an absolute stunner of a novel this is - and one that try as I might, I cannot hope to do justice to in this review.

This book is a complex mix of auto-fiction (part fiction/part autobiographical) straight from our female narrator's soul, and historical essay charting the research she passionately undertakes about female poet Eibhlin Dubh Ni Chonaill's famous 17th century Irish poem Caoineadh Airt Ui Laoghaire (The Keen for Art O Laoghaire) which was written to mourn her murdered husband. It's enchanting, magical and completely captivating.

The unnamed female narrator takes you on a journey through her reality of love, marriage and motherhood - the joy, the fear, the exhaustion, the exhilaration, and the comfort she derives from the routine of her life, in a way that links her experiences to the generations of wives and mothers that have come before, in both a physical and spiritual sense.

What keeps her going is her rediscovery of Eibhlin Dubh Ni Chonaill's poem to her lost lover, taken in bites as she sits nursing her babes. Over the years, after tragedy comes close to her own family, she feels the connection with the poet grow stronger, and she is compelled to find out all she can about the woman who was fondly called Nelly by her nearest and dearest. This becomes an obsession that drives, sustains and inspires her, whilst allowing her to also dissect her own past and come to terms with where life has brought her.

"When we first met, I was a child, and she had been dead for centuries..."

This is a novel that deftly examines the reality of being a woman, wife and mother. All through the book you are reminded that "this is a female text" and this extends beyond the life of this young mother to all the women who have gone before, as the trail of clues she unearths lets her piece together as much as she can about Nelly and her family. This is a trail that is very hard to follow, as the history of the women our narrator is so desperate to learn has been all but erased over the years, and the clues have to be sought between the lines of the recorded deeds of their menfolk.

There are some beautiful and poignant themes explored here that are more than a little thought provoking. This book shines a light on the mystical power of shared experience, and the fact that women so often pass on the details of their lives through the spoken word, so that the traces of their existence are easily lost in the mists of time. It is a tragedy that the way history is recorded and preserved is so biased towards the truth and deeds of men, and yet, the echoes of our own mothers and the generations of women before them persist in the wisdom and tales that are passed down to us, their essence remains as we then pass them onto our own children. There is something rather lovely about the way we hold their lives inside us - even if the history books deny their contribution for the greater part.

I was really struck by the notion expressed in this book that one's age and stage of life has so much influence on how we experience, and process, what we read (how very true this is), and impressed by the way Doireann Ni Ghriófa uses "female text" to honour womanhood: my favourite example being her use of this term to reference the care and love that went into a cardigan made by her own mother for her youngest child - the "text" being written into the very texture of the garment, if you will. Glorious!

Eibhlin Dubh Ni Chonaill's keen to her lost love is thoughtfully included as an appendix for those of us who are unfamiliar with it, in both the original Irish (which was fittingly only recorded after being passed down through the tongues of women), and as a translation by Doireann Ni Ghriófa for those of us who sadly cannot read the original (how I wish I could). I recommend a reading of this poem both before you start and when you have finished this book - trust me, it will be worth it.

"This is a female text, which is also a caoineadh: a dirge and a drudge song, an anthem of praise, a chant and a keen, a lament and an echo, a chorus and a hymn. Join in."

This book is completely gorgeous and it will stay with me for a long, long time. Do yourself a huge favour and get yourself a copy from your favourite book retailer now.

About the author:

Doireann Ní Ghríófa is a bilingual writer whose books explore birth, death, desire, and domesticity. Her latest poetry collection was chosen as a Book of the Year in both The Irish Times and The Irish Independent. Doireann's awards include a Lannan Literary Fellowship (USA, 2018), a Seamus Heaney Fellowship (Queen s University, 2018), the Ostana Prize (Italy, 2018), and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature (2016), among others. A Ghost in the Throat is her prose debut.